The history of English ren'ai games

[mikey]

Hi everyone,

It was a long-time dream of mine to write an article about the history of English fan-made ren'ai gaming.

Since I couldn't log on to my site yet becuse of the server change, I give you the draft here, as a post. It's still very much a draft, but I would like to hear some opinions and comments. Corrections are very welcome as I was only one person researching, so I may have overlooked some things or dates. I tried to avoid criticism and praise that wouldn't be merited, but if you find something that's really offending you, please tell me.

Also remember, this is an article written by one person (me) and I like to put in my own views as well, while trying to stay as non-biased as possible. And one can never make an article that deals with sensitive issues that will please everyone. Also keep in mind that the article is an article, not an exhaustive compendium, so if there were a thousand reasons for something (not) happening that you know of, I just need the most important one.

Alright, thanks for any help you might be able to give me.

The final article WILL have an introduction, a conclusion and pictures, of course.

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The history of English fan-made ren'ai gaming.

Muto Anime was a company built around making and selling anime-related programs, including games. Their marketing strategy was to build a beta version and sell that to another company for a low price. That company however had to deal with the relatively buggy engine programmed in Basic and make corrections to the sometimes bad English language. The company started in 1994 and until around 2000 it was basically the only source of free English bishoujo games. For some time many of the projects were available for download, but since movies took up a substantial amount of the games' sizes (the games were 400 MB and upwards), it was hard to download them, because of bandwidth issues and, the 56k modems (in 1996/97 that was the hi-end) and pricy connection fees were also a factor.

From the games Muto Anime has produced, Muto Memories, Muto Memories 2, Together and Together Forever (newest release) were the ones that people got to play the most. As for the titles Muto The Dragon Slayer, Remember me Forever and Inn With Passion, their status is unclear, but chances are Asian players had more chances of getting their hands on them. The immense bandwidth troubles prevented Muto Anime from offering the games for free for a longer period of time. The ones that were sold were also not available from that time. Currently, only the non-ren'ai card game Anime Casino is available.

Muto Anime was a creative factory, with many projects that jumpstarted other people to make theor own games or tools. The YADS creating tool was to allow players to build their own characters, there are drawing tutorials and plans were made for an easy-to-use open game engine. Muto Anime has reigned for five years and its importance can't really be measured. Everyone knew the Asian community was miles ahead and had its tools and doujin producers. But Muto Anime is where it all started for the English, or international ren'ai community.

The rise of the Megatokyo webcomic in 2001, that revolved around bishoujo games gave way to a new wave of creative undertakings gathering around the Megatokyo Dating Sim forum. The logical consequence was a project that would make the adventures of the Megatokyo cast into a game. While these ambitions remained largely unfruitful, there was a group of people that started on a project of an open-source dating sim engine which could be used for either the Megatokyo project, or any other game. Home at the Sourceforge web, the project saw many ups and downs. After the initial phase around 2001, the project stagnated, only to be revived around 2003. Still, the advent of the 2004 script-based Ren'Py engine seems to have been the final step in shelving the Sourceforge Engine, as one of the creators officially stated.

The year 2001 also brought a project, very ambitious in size and presentation, called LadyStar. Over the following years the story underwent many presentation changes, the latest being a 2004 Flash version. It is non-interactive, but nicely combines original 3D graphics with prefessional style characters. LadyStar has the fate of many projects, it is largely unfinished. Another project, Hearts On Paper had a promising start, with even the artistic help of Muto Anime, but it didn't survive, although officially it is still not cancelled.

A parallel world to the ren'ai engine and game development was the rise of the Flash community. Simple Flash games allowed for fast and effective minigame creation. Crisp vector graphics were easy to make and the Flash phenomenon also hit the anime gaming community. However it seems that the simplicity was attracting largely hentai-oriented creators. In addition to that, there basically were no Flash-making teams who drew their own art and so the games either used copyrighted material, or simply fan-reproductions of it.

The most notable project is SimGirls, in its many versions a DNA2-based non-story sim with statistics-based gameplay. It had great success and is still perhaps the most legendary of the Flash projects, even though it was never really finished completely. But as they say, the older they are, the better they were. Arguably of course, there are more elaborate Flash-games from this time, such as Ganguro Girl, which, inspired by the unfinished SimGirls project was possibly the first completed Flash bishoujo game. Also, the team that was to become Mausland created many fun Flash gamelets, fomr StarDust to the popular series of Frank's Adventures 1-3. Regrettably for ren'ai fans, these was still just hentai collecting.

A third area of development were the commercial fan-made projects, at this time it was Project Journeys, or The Snowing Clear Skies On April 29th, by ClearWind Design Studios. Using an own engine, named Paths later on, the aim was to create a game that was both intelectually demanding, professionally executed and commercially viable. The project set new ambitions for a game script. Based on a full-scale novel, which had to be re-written and rebuilt to make for a multipath game script, the sheer size of the text, comparable to Japanese text-intensive titles puts much importance on the gameplay design.

Sometimes ren'ai games develop from simple text games. One of the examples is The PK Girl, a very long text game with anime graphics. While not really in the standard ren'ai format and layout and in need of the external runner Adrift, the game is appreciated for the various endings and a contest-winning story. Also, the game-making program RPG Maker led to successful program-dependent game creations, such as three minigames inspired by the Yami No Matsuei series. The team succeeded in making Wanko, Love Impact and Yami No Romance well worth the invested while. More projects were games seen at the Club H page, most notably the unconfirmed Princess Maker 2/3 or the Sailormoon Dating Game which is very hard to get any info about.

The year 2003 was a breakthrough year for the English ren'ai community. Seeing failed projects many people were truly fed up and a change of thinking started to emerge. Most notably Lemma Soft was to bring the influential game Tales Of Lemma. The author intended the game to be a simple "small start", but it turned out to be a defining game for a whole new breed of projects, that were small, but complete.

Two more projects received publicity in 2003 however. One of them was the ambitious Town Heat. A full-scale ren'ai game using its own engine and many novelties of presentation, it would clearly be the next-generation of games. Featuring many characters, not only female, but also male, animations and statistics were all a part of it. Eventually, there was a demo released in 2004, but the completion probablity may not be too high.

Similar problems are plaguing the team around the perhaps most ambitious all-round dating sim/ren'ai game, Love Revolution. Possibly a project with the most changes in design, the frequent manipulations and relatively inconsistent organization saw the project fail many deadlines. There was however much promotion for the game-to-be and many hopes were put into it. Some hopes were also put into the project of a Windows-based WYSIWYG game engine, Project H, which regrettably suffered from many setbacks and was abandoned after a year of work.

Back to Tales Of Lemma, the game that took almost a year from idea to final build, saw the rise of Lemma Soft, which promised a larger-scale sequel, Tales Of Lemma 2. The success of Tales Of Lemma inspired its creator to make a simple document with easy-to-understand game-making rules for everyone. The #1 rule that said to start small and build on the success, was the motto behind the ToL concept. However as future will show, it doesn't mean that there are no limits as to what a single person can do. Tales of Lemma 2 was too big a step ahead for Lemma Soft, which was proven by the delays and the final icing of the project in early 2005.

In 2004 ATP Projects released Black Pencil as its first game. The game breaks the schoolgirl stereotype and introduces a different line of games. This is also confirmed with the following project River Trap, which became a very influential English ren'ai game, with many features and special director's effects and represents the alternative approach to ren'ai. After the 6-month effort of River Trap however comes ATP Projects' simple games streak, with the three-weeks 2.4 MB game Kaori as the prototype of a simple game, that brought a new design philosophy into ATP Projects.

The two ATPP games which were released in the first half of the year, together with another completed game, Kasuka were also responsible for a growth in the Lemma Soft forum community. Kasuka, as many feel used the power of Flash for the good and the game, despite the criticised plain backgrounds is a merit in terms of gameplay and replayability. The year saw an improved version of the game come out, with an additional character to play for.

Looking at the demo scene, in addition to the webcomic-based Untouched demo was released, and it showed lots of potential. The Town Heat demo was also completed. A third demo was released by the Projects Journeys team, but it had little meaning for the PJ team, as it was more like a demonstration than a fragment of the full build. A long time after the project started, the demo showed how far away from the game the team, troubled by lack of artists is. Early 2005's acclaim for the PJ business concept is an achievement, but one that is on paper only.

More successful was the small-scale game-maker Hanako Games, which introduced its Summer Schoolgirls demo with variable gameplay and a promising cast of many characters. The game, when finished, promised to be available for a low introductory price via as shareware.

The Love Revolution's created sub-team fully devoted themselves to the first original bishounen English project, Fragile Hearts. Using the Love Revolution engine, the project was quite troubled and in the future Fragile Hearts switched engines, in favor of a project that was still in its beginnings in 2004, the Ren'Py engine. The new engine was simple to use and quickly showed its true potential. Still, it would be almost half a year until the first Ren'Py game would be released, from its creator American Bishoujo.

Not to forget is the mentioned community growth. As the Megatokyo forum became more and more oriented on Japanese ren'ai/bishoujo gaming, creators of new English ren'ai projects gathered around the Lemma Soft forum. Staff migrations resulted in many new projects or at least cooperative efforts, none of which were released in the same year though. Late 2004, the first site dedicated to completed and free English ren'ai games was created, the Ren'Ai Archives. Much of the importance of this site which simply hosts the games so that they don't disappear like some earlier efforts comes from the fact that RAA only accepts completed projects and a change of thinking by a community plagued with setbacks and never-ending projects is noticeable. The completed game, no matter how small, is valued more than a project.

The Flash community continued to gather around the Newgrounds website and was led by team Forkheads and their Flash creations. With the experience of non-games like the Sex Kitten series, the two brothers managed to put together quite playable, if intelectually less demandingly scripted games such as EVA4, Love Hina SD, Azumanga Daioh SD or Galaxy Angel SD, which, as names indicate were using established anime titles as their design base, gathering praise from fans who liked this type of fan service. Also mentionable, the alternative to the Forkhead dominance, Final Fantasy Sim Date or the first original Flash game since Ganguro Girl, Trystell.

The start of 2005 was marked by several early releases, such as ATP Project's moody Milk Swim and one day later the first Ren'Py game, American Bishoujo's Moonlight Walks. After this, Ren'Py became one of the most important factors in the increase of fan-made games. There was one more Ren'Py Project, before the freshly-founded Ren'Ai Games released its first game, and the first completed bishounen game project, Amgine Park, also running on the Ren'Py engine.

March 2005 was the climax of an effort to mimic events like NaNoMangO or NaNoWriMo, where candidates have a month to complete given tasks. About five months before, the idea of NaNoRenO, make a game in one month started to take its form. The concept was proven by Kaori and Moonlight Walks, both of which were made in under one month. The time was right and not surprisingly all but one project that met the NaNoRenO 2005 deadline were Ren'Py-based. NaNoRenO was very important in many aspects. One of them was the amount of new potential game-makers the event inspired and jumpstarted. And although not all of them finished their projects on time, NaNoRenO can be called a success.

The games of NaNoRenO were the overly complicated school story for grown-ups Transfer Teacher by ATPP, the sci-fi story with a lot of potential for the future Reconstruction 01 by Allugic which introduced action elements into the gameplay. Then, the instant success of the idealistic story-based When I Rule The World proved that the community is open to unconventional storylines. Also making the deadline was the microgame Amatire. The most successful game of NaNoRenO 2005 was to become Ren'Ai Games' The Garden Society: Kykuit with a unique romantic atmosphere all in black and white. One month past the deadline, the inventive RPG-style Flash-based game Heikou introduced solid gameplay in a fantasy world, a compact package much in the tradition of the preceding title Kasuka, although very different in terms of story.

The new maxime of "finishing is everything" and other factors however gave way to some projects that were too small in size or had other deficits. Good examples are Marry Me Misato!, Sango!, Amatire or Reconstruction 01. Still, when NaNoRenO ended, it was substantially harder for beginning teams to bring up the motivation and enthusiasm needed to complete that first work. After NaNoRenO many teams announced a more relaxed pace for a more quality product in the end. The harsh rules of NaNoRenO were criticised in this aspect, as teams had to make trade-offs in story, graphics or music.

[Megaman Z]

The Flash community continued to gather around the Newgrounds website and was led by team Forkheads and their Flash creations. With the experience of non-games like the Sex Kitten series, the two brothers managed to put together quite playable, if intelectually less demandingly scripted games such as EVA4, Love Hina SD, Azumanga Daioh SD or Galaxy Angel SD, which, as names indicate were using established anime titles as their design base, gathering praise from fans who liked this type of fan service.

actually, the order that those particular flash games got released was a bit different. in order:
1)EVA4
2)Love Hina SD
3)Galaxy Angel SD (first very buggy release. I should know, 'cause I almost tried to contact Klacid [the author] about Mint's storyline causing the game to freeze.)
4)first part of the Sex Kitten series
5)Azumanga Daioh
6)Galaxy Angel SD bugfix (not 100%, some mission items are impossible to locate.)
7)end of Sex Kitten series
Sex Kitten #6 (don't ask. it WAS released after 7. weird.)
9[?])Sex Kitten RPG [I'd have to double check who the author is]

just thought I'd point that out to you before Klacid does (if he [she?] notices)

[Sai]

Nice work Mikey. Very honest and a good read. Thanks for your efforts ^^

[Blue Lemma]

*clap clap clap* Nice article! Weren't Muto's things Visual Basic instead of plain Basic, though? Minor issue, but thought I'd ask anyway.

You know, no matter what happens, I'm really glad that I was able to make ToL 1 - it got a nice little community together here ^_^ I can't wait to see all you guys grow as artists and writers and maybe even collab on stuff *_* There could be some fantastic games made! (I'll be doing stuff too, just after things settle down for me @_@ )

[PyTom]

Random thoughts, from my perspective...

I came in in early 2004, which was probably too late for the muto stuff. Is it still available anywhere? I would like to try playing it, but I haven't been able to get at it.

My introduction to the genre was through the various flash games, and some of the commercial games. This lead me through megatokyo to lemmasoft, where I downloaded ToL1. That inspired me to write the original version of Ren'Py. I sorta got distracted for a few months, and dropped off the board for a bit. When I came back, I saw people were considering using Ren'Py, and so I wanted to give them a program I was proud of. Hence Ren'Py 4.

Moonlight Walks was inspired by Marvel 1602, and especially by the character of Virginia Dare portrayed in that book. (The story goes in a very differerent direction, however.)

One thing that I noticed is that in completed games, the size of the team tends to be fairly small. Usually, (always?) one person who scripts and integrates the game, perhaps supported by people who provide art, music, and other resources, but don't have much control over the final game. I'm not criticising this, by any means. It seems like the way things have to be done in a noncommercial setting. (Where the threat of not being paid can't be used to motivate people.)

I think we're in a kind of anti-nanoreno right now. I wonder how many teams are actively working on games (to the point where a release is in sight), and when we can expect those games to be released?

[mikey]

Thanks for the comments and the extra info! It's always much harder to generalize well, than to fully detail an issue. So I'm happy that so far there isn't any critical upset about a particular subject.

Megaman_Z >> Many thanks for the correct order!

Blue Lemma >> I was hoping I was right about ToL1 being in dev for around a year (concept to exe), I looked up several keywords on the internet and mostly at MT and it started as early as July 4th 2002. And Visual Basic for Muto's game it is then.

PyTom >> I came in in around 2000/2001 and even then I couldn't get my hands on Muto's things. The only thing that I have is the Together Forever Demo, which I installed on many machines and it never worked Upon deinstallation it always deletes the Arial font

ad small teams: I was thinking about putting in a summary like that at the end, or write something more about the advantages of the ToL1 game format with up to 1 hour of play... not exactly what I would call coffee-break games though, because they are longer and demand a certain level of immersion, but if you can think of a more suitable name, like "hour-games" or "visual novellas" (you know, a novella is a short story, then again it sounds like telenovelas ^_^), then feel free to suggest a name for it (it needs one).

ad anti-nanoreno: it's true and IMO this was also predictable. I think a good time to hope for new ren'ai games is the Summer. But it's true that at least two projects should have been completed by now. It will also depend on how much time the individual teams/people devote to game-making. Late 2004 I dropped my manga.sk commitments just to fully focus on game-making so basically I don't do many things in my free time except that now (and some kart/bike racing plus the occasional article). But it will be a different story with other teams.

Well, anyway, keep it coming.

[papillon]

.... STILL trying to get my artist to send me the rest of the backgrounds....

At the moment, there are 17 done. There is one more that absolutely has to be done by the same guy for consistency's sake, 1 setting that can be dropped if necessary, and 4 that only appear once so it's not that important if their style doesn't match up.

I badly need to learn a way to draw my own backgrounds.

[Guest]

The unregistered/demo version of Together Forever is still available here. This is a complete remake of the original Together (highly influenced by To Heart), although it's kinda buggy and incomplete.

http://www.mutoanime.com/Games/Together ... orever.htm

I still have the Together demo, which was posted in Fall 2001. However, the password to continue further was never released (it was supposed to be a free download since only the 18+ version was intended to be sold).

Muto's Memories (a strict Tokimeki Memorial clone?).......well, it was already gone by the time I started looking for it in 1999.
Needless to say, no one has hosted it since the original release.

[Megaman Z]

lemme check some of the rarely checked areas for some of these... I'll post any findings here. (among these areas will be a couple bittorrent trackers and one P2P file sharing program)

[status report: so far, nothing. no files in Limewire, no torrents, no DL sites. you'd think somebody would have at least made a torrent for it if it was popular.]

[Cazel]

If my old computer was still working at the moment, I'd check to see what I still had on it, but I'm pretty sure MM1 was long gone even before I got my new computer 3 years ago. I don't think I ever got MM2 to work at all, so I doubt I would have that either.

[mikey]

Hmmm, interesting about the Together Forever demo being a remake, I kind of suspected something was not right, you don't name one game Together and then name something completely different Together Forever.

Long time ago I also started an intensive search for Muto's games... No results. Possibly if you tried on some Asian-speaking sites... but it's really a problem when a game is that big. Smaller things are easier to store. And with the games being so hard to install/run, it just adds to the frustration (don't get me started on Together Forever)

[rioka]

mikey's finished version of The History of English Ren'ai Gaming is now up at Ren'ai Games.com =)